After Xu Heping left, Xu An took out paper and pen from the bedroom and began to calculate.
You can make boxed lunches at home. In this weather, you don't need insulated boxes; two large styrofoam boxes will suffice. I only have oil, salt, soy sauce, and sugar at home, but I'll need to add quite a bit more seasonings. I'd conservatively estimate that this part of the expense will be around twenty yuan.
You'll need boxed lunches, takeout containers, plastic bags, chopsticks, and spoons, but these aren't expensive. If it's your first time trying this, you won't need too many; five yuan should be enough.
Next comes the most important part: the food inside the boxed lunch.
Xu An recalled the videos of construction sites selling boxed meals that he had seen on short video platforms. They were basically three dishes: one meat dish, one half meat and half vegetable dish, and one purely vegetarian dish.
Let's calculate the quantity for ten portions based on this configuration.
For meat dishes, let's start with braised pork belly. A boxed lunch with about 100 grams of sauce is enough, and 2 jin (1 kg) of raw pork is sufficient. To make braised pork belly, you need to use pork belly, which is more expensive, costing 13 yuan per jin (0.5 kg), so 2 jin would cost 26 yuan.
For a half-meat, half-vegetarian option, I'll make scrambled eggs with tomatoes. We have tomatoes grown in our own garden. You can buy a whole carton of eggs; we can eat them at home regularly. The total is twelve yuan.
For the last vegetarian dish, let's have some stir-fried bok choy. It's refreshing and helps to cut through the richness.
The total cost is 63, with 38 for ingredients and about 45 for homegrown vegetables.
The more you buy, the lower your costs. If you can buy a fixed amount of meat and vegetables every day, the purchase price per kilogram can be reduced by two or three yuan, and the overall cost can be reduced by another ten or eight yuan.
The problem is that it's unclear what a reasonable price would be for the boxed meals. If the price is too high, the workers won't be willing to pay.
Until he graduated and started working, Xu An had never eaten boxed lunches outside. He either cooked for himself or ate the large pot dishes in the cafeteria, so he was unaware of the prices of fast food boxed lunches at that time.
After starting work, I did eat boxed lunches at noon, but in 2016, a boxed lunch cost 15 yuan, which was an impossible price to pay on a construction site.
Let's go check out the situation near the construction site before making a decision.
When we arrived at Xu Heping's house, the door was locked, and he wasn't home; he'd probably gone off somewhere to play.
After wandering around the village, I finally found him under the banyan tree at the village entrance. He was happily playing marbles with a group of seven- or eight-year-old children and seemed to have won quite a few, with a large pile of marbles at his feet.
"Hey Heping, I'm going to wander around the construction site and see what kind of food they have. Do you want to come?"
"Go away, wait until I finish this round, I'm about to win."
I know Xu Heping meant "go," but it sounds more like he wants me to go away.
After waiting for two minutes, Xu Heping finally won the round and left with Xu An, carrying two pockets full of marbles, amidst the children's resentful gazes.
It takes half an hour to get from the village to the town, and another half hour to get from the town to the construction site in the city.
Xujia Village is not large. If you trace back three or four generations, you will find that the villagers are outsiders.
Xujia Village is where my great-grandfather's generation suffered from famine. As the main force migrated south, two brothers chose to settle in this desolate coastal area.
After years of recuperation, the village has grown from two households to more than twenty households, becoming the Xu Family Village we know today.
There is a bus stop outside Xujia Village. There are buses to the city at 7:00 AM, 11:00 AM, and 12:00 PM. The two of them happened to catch the 12:00 PM bus.
After getting on the bus, Xu Heping took out the marbles from his pocket and counted them one by one. After counting the last one, he was overjoyed and wanted to share his joy of victory with Xu An, but he found that Xu An looked troubled.
What's Anzi thinking about?
Xu An shared his idea, and Xu Heping's eyes lit up. He patted his chest and volunteered, "I don't know how to cook, but I can help out."
He then sold his own fishpond again.
"This counts as doing something worthwhile, right? I'll ask my parents for some sponsorship when I get home tonight. Forget about the money, but I should be able to catch some fish."
Xu An understood Xu Heping's thoughts. He wasn't a freeloader giving away his fish indiscriminately. He simply knew about Xu Heping's current predicament and wanted to help him as much as possible.
“I appreciate your kindness, but this is business, and we need to keep things separate. If we really need fish, then we have to calculate the price, and that's how much it should cost.”
"If you can get something for free and you don't want it, are you out of your mind?"
"Even close brothers should keep clear accounts. This isn't like a regular meal where we only eat once or twice. If the business really takes off, we'll need fish quite often."
"Alright, alright, I can't argue with you about principles. I'll ask them for a discount, okay?"
Seeing Xu Heping's nonchalant attitude, Xu An knew that the kid hadn't listened to what he said.
The plan to sell boxed lunches is still in the conceptual stage. Even if it actually comes to fruition, it doesn't necessarily have to involve fish. If fish is needed later, we'll skip this kid and talk to his parents first.
The bus passed a construction site where the foundation was being laid, and the location gave Xu An a strange sense of familiarity.
Xu Heping noticed Xu An's gaze and looked out the window: "Isn't this the construction site where Uncle Dongliang works? It looks like they're building a residential complex, I think it's called Bauhinia Garden."
Bauhinia Garden!
Xu An finally remembered that he would pass by this place every year during his winter and summer vacations when he went home from university. He watched as the place transformed from a desolate place to a bustling one, and watched as the housing prices here rose from 5,000 yuan per square meter to 20,000 yuan per square meter, a full 3,000 yuan per square meter higher than other neighborhoods in the area.
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